Landmark Hampton church traces roots to 1610

St. John's church in Hampton's 4 different sites. Second Church site...This is the one-acre plot at Hampton University, 1623 to 1667.

St. John's church in Hampton's 4 different sites. Second Church site...This is the one-acre plot at Hampton University, 1623 to 1667. (Joe Fudge, Daily Press)

Mark St. John Erickson, merickson@dailypress.com | 247-4783

When Union troops occupied Hampton during the Civil War, they couldn't help but be impressed by the ancient brick walls of St. John's Church.

Many admiring Yankees wrote home describing its weighty aura of antiquity. One souvenir seeker even sent back a pilfered book inscribed — "Taken from the oldest church in Uncle Sam's dominion."

Certainly, the bluecoats were right about St. John's unrivaled pedigree. Founded along with the town in 1610, it still ranks as English America's oldest continuous parish — and it's a key player in Hampton's 400th anniversary celebration this year.

What they didn't know was that the imposing structure was merely the most recent stop in a long journey that included churches at three other sites — or that over the centuries its parishioners had endured attacks by Indians, pillaging by the British and murderous struggles with pirates.

Not long after federal forces marched into town, in fact, the 1728 landmark underwent another test when rebel soldiers from its own congregation put the church and more than 100 other structures to the torch.

But that's just another chapter in a tale that — on almost every page — evokes the long, colorful life of America's oldest English-speaking town like no other source.

"Not many churches have this kind of story — and certainly not over such a period of time," says James Tormey, author of "How Firm a Foundation: The 400-Year History of Hampton, Virginia's St. John's Episcopal Church."

"As one person in our congregation said, St. John's belongs to all the people of Hampton — and not just the people who go to the church."

Nobody knows just where the parish took root after the town's founding. Tradition puts it somewhere on the west bank of Church Creek near the bend at present-day Chesapeake and LaSalle avenues.

That's where the parish's glebe lands ran, providing income for the church from some of the most productive fields in a settlement still known by its Indian name of Kecoughtan. But no direct documentary or archaeological evidence has confirmed the site, which — in 1616 — served just 20-odd scattered colonists struggling to tame the Virginia wilderness.

Historians know far more about the second church, which rose from the east bank of the Hampton River near present-day Hampton University two years after the catastrophic Indian uprising of 1622.

Swollen by refugees, the congregation of newly renamed Elizabeth City Parish grew to nearly 400 people, making it Virginia's largest. Among them was Edward Waters, a church warden and burgessman who survived a 1610 shipwreck and capture by the Indians to amass large tracts of land at Strawberry Banks and what is now Mariners' Museum Park.

"You could write a novel about him," Tormey says.

The congregation also included the colony's former Surveyor General, William Claiborne — who owned much of the land that is now downtown Hampton.

Since he gave the parish a set of communion silver from a settlement destroyed by Indians, it has seen longer service than any other English communion silver in America, Tormey says.

Still, the growing church and its silver were on the move again within a few decades — driven inland by a 1667 hurricane with a 12-foot storm surge. Relocated about 11/2 miles away, the third church rose from a site off present-day Pembroke Avenue, giving it protection from floods and better road access to the county's increasingly far-flung plantations.

Like its predecessor, the new structure was the center of parish life — and as Hampton's port grew the church became much richer. Slate headstones began cropping up in both the floor and graveyard, signaling an era of unparalleled prosperity and ambition.

Vice Adm. John Neville, commander of the English West Indies squadron, was buried here in 1697. Wealthy landowner and justice Thomas Curle, whose brother Pascoe helped lay out the town in 1691, was interred in 1700.

Few funerary monuments tell you as much about the church, the town and the times, however, as the headstone of Hampton customs collector Peter Heyman. Standing beside Gov. Francis Nicholson, he was killed by gunfire in 1700 during a furious sea battle off Lynnhaven Bay with more than 100 pirates.

By 1728, Hampton's port and maritime interests had grown so much that its wealthy members moved again, erecting one of the colony's grandest churches back near the town's bustling waterfront.

But within 50 years it fell on hard times, damaged by a 1775 English naval attack and stripped of its tax income by the Revolution.

More problems followed in the early 1800s, when the parish lost its glebe lands and their revenues.

"We continued to have ministers. But what suffered noticeably was the condition of the church," Tormey says.

"Of 100 colonial churches in Virginia, only 40 survived — and here the belfry was rotted so badly they had to remove the bell."

British solders added to the church's woes when they pillaged the defenseless town during the War of 1812. Stripped of all its windows, doors and interior woodwork, the leaky, all-but-abandoned structure continued to deteriorate until the early 1820s, when Jane Barron Hope — the eldest daughter of prominent Hampton naval commander James Barron — returned home to visit the graves of her ancestors.

"Cousin," she said, turning to Hampton resident Robert Servant, "if I were a man I would have these walls built up."

Electrified by her words, Servant went to relatives, friends and former church members in Norfolk as well as Hampton, launching a campaign that would ultimately raise more than $1,200 for repairs. The vestry hired a new minister in 1827, and — in 1830 — the structure was reconsecrated as St. John's.

"We ladies have always liked to think that Jane Barron Hope was the spark that saved us," says Tormey's wife, Ann, whose great-grandfather James S. Darling played a similar roll in the revival of the church after the Civil War.

Buoyed by the resurgence of Hampton in the 1840s and '50s, in fact, St. John's was thriving as the war approached. Former President John Tyler and his wife worshipped there whenever they visited their summer home on the Hampton River.

But that didn't stop the rebel troops who set the church and the rest of the largely deserted town ablaze to keep it from being used by the North.

"It's still hard for me to believe they burned their own town," Tormey says. "But someone in our congregation actually came up to me one day and said his ancestor had personally burned the church."

Within days, the story of St. John's spread across both North and South, evoking cries of protest on one side and self-sacrifice on the other. Union troops visited the blackened walls in disbelief. So did President Abraham Lincoln and his cabinet members.

"I never saw such a ruin," wrote Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase. "The old church, amid the graves of the generations, a gem of a building…where generation after generation of Virginians had been baptized, confirmed, married, admitted to the Communion, and dismissed with tears and benedictions to their last repose…We returned from Hampton saddened."

Despite the intensity of the blaze, the 2-foot-thick walls survived, providing a dramatic argument for the church's restoration after the war ended. The first contributor was a man from a neighboring Baptist church, whose donation was soon followed by others from across the country.

"St. John's is an icon of Hampton's past — of its times of struggle, its times of prosperity and its times of endurance," Hampton History Museum curator Michael J. Cobb says.